PART 6 - Kami Cotler (Elizabeth Walton) Reacts to The Waltons ‘The Foundling” Season 1 Episode 1

hi my name is kami kotler and i played elizabeth on the waltons and we're going to be making a little video talking about the foundling which was the first episode of the waltons tv series ever aired i love mary's acting here too first of all she's already so tall right she's it's just the first season so it's not that long since since the homecoming but she's just growing right she's all legs here and the dress has become too short and this was frequently the case like we'd have wardrobe that we would outgrow and we'd still keep wearing it until they managed to i suppose it was intentional because patricia norris the wardrobe mistress was very talented um but i love how she looks and she looks so fretful and concerned about the the haunted house and such a rule follower yeah look how red my face is it must have been hot that day or maybe i was getting a sunburn this was all kind of pre-sunscreen i have a slightly weird memory about that moment when um when she runs out and meets the truck and i it could be a false memory but what i remember was some kind of conversation about why she would run towards him if she was hiding from him and that there was a discussion among the adults and the directors how do you justify what happens next in the script which is she's standing out in front of the house she's hiding in she's watching her daughter disappear down the road she sees her husband coming and then she goes towards him and they i remember the adults deciding that the way they could justify the action was that she was distracting him from holly because holly was too close by and he did she didn't want him to find her she's nicely lit in that scene with the light behind her things like that just take time right so so when you make a tv show every minute costs you a lot of money because you're paying everybody who's present um and to take the extra time to arrange for a light to be set behind her so that it would it would brighten her hair and create that slight aura around her those are all decisions that take time if you go on to a feature film set right where they're making a big movie for the big screen they might shoot two pages a day so they'll spend 10 hours a day lighting and adjusting and carefully creating the images you see but on a tv show like this we had to finish an entire hour of television in about six to seven days so there's a lot of pressure to move quickly and into complete scenes um this interior is actually on the back lot if i recall correctly um they built this this set for this event for this episode and the interior was real um and it was dressed and it had interior features and we filmed inside of it so that light you see there with that kind of bright light coming in i think that might really be sunlight which makes for a really dramatic look in this dark spooky shed-like old house so many of these episodes you know i've read them when they came to us when they first released the script you know you come to the set and they pan them all out um and i would typically read the whole thing but i didn't always understand the whole thing i don't know i didn't know what a throwback was i kind of had and as a little kid i wasn't always that interested in all this growing up talking just notice the interesting choices the screenwriter's making here because he's not a bad man right like he's sort of in the villain role but he still cares about his wife and he leaves some money for her and he's just trying to do what he thinks is best based on his experience okay now we're in the in the living room set so we spent a lot of time in this set when we had to use the radio um there would be no audio so we wouldn't hear anything um but they would have to get electricity to it because of the light and there would always be a little notation in the bottom of the of the call sheet to cue the prop man that it would have to be i think they would say practical if something um really had to function so in this in this scene here with this um in the living room gathered around the radio the interior light that little lamp that's over uh john walton's head and then the light and the radio are real there's electricity flowing so somebody on the electrician's crew had to wire them up plug them in make them work but then all the other lights are coming either from lights on stands or lights overhead in the kind of catwalk that was just about the roof of the ceiling just above the wall so if you look at where will's standing if you go up like three feet that wall just ends um and above that is a scaffolded walkway with additional lights and so all the choices you see here in terms of shadows and lights they're all intentional done by russ mendy the director of photography and we are placed by the director so he would say okay michael i'm going to have you sit here ralph you're going to be in this chair cammie on ralph's lap judy on the ottoman in front of ralph mary and eric and david and john you'll be on the floor and there were these little round like ottoman cushions that we often got to sit on on the floor and then ellen will be in this rocking chair and and will in the other and then richard we're going to put you in the background at the kitchen table so that would be set up at the beginning um and then very it could have been in the script that michael was um was making a ball of yarn um or it could have been something that that just came out it was just on set like maybe the set dresser put a satchel with some balls of yarn and michael made the choice oh and we'll do this and i'll do it with judy and invite her to participate in this activity or it could be something that the director wanted um and asked the actresses to do intentionally but it's a nice touch yeah so now we're listening to edgar bergen um who you may recall played played grandpa in the very first walton's in the homecoming so we can't hear there is no real audio playing because if there were audio it would mess up the soundtrack so typically they would just tell us to laugh and we'd laugh sometimes there'd be somebody off camera like signaling like laugh now laugh now and then here of course the director drops out the audio so we can see the whole thing from holly's point of view the stairs go up to nothing so both these actors are walking up the stairs and then once they get to the landing and off camera they'll just stop and then this scene would have been filmed on a different day probably um in the girls bedroom which looks really blue so this is a lovely scene between richard and erica um like i said erica didn't act a lot a lot after this um she doesn't have a big long list of credits like some folks who were guests on our show um but interestingly enough her her daughter went on to become an actress and her daughter is emma hunton who was on a show called good trouble which i haven't seen but my daughter has seen so the girl's bedroom set was on the other side of the soundstage it was actually the same set they used for the parents room they just changed the furniture and the decorations but there was a little cluster of four sets all next to each other all connected by that one hallway john boy's room the parents in the girls room the bath bathroom and the boys room this again is such a sweet scene between richard and erica um i know just how she was feeling because i've done scenes like that with richard where he's just being really engaging it's so easy to act off of somebody when they're when they're that compelling and you just look at them and they make you react you know because of how they're behaving i mean he does that very thing here i think with her because she begins so so kind of sad and then just thoughtful and he's being so interesting so i just want to point out there's a lot of coverage there are a lot of shots in this scene they have that establishing shot of the bed with holly and john boy and then they have um an over the shoulder where we see a little piece of drum boy's shoulder and holly and then we have a point of view from her pointing up at him and then we have a tight shot of polly's face so they had to do this scene one let's see the master one the two over the shoulders and then the two tight close-ups at least five different setups and then holly gets it right it's that glorious moment of her figuring it out just so reminiscent of things like the miracle worker right other magical moments thank you for watching this and i hope you found it fairly interesting i know i found it kind of interesting and nostalgic to look back at this show and see what i could remember from back in the day if you're interested and want to see more things like this you might want to click like or subscribe to the channel because that will let us know that you want us to keep doing this

Channel: Kami Cotler

Views: 16,420

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Id: G-tLtj1t2Bc

Length: 10min 17sec (617 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 20 2020